Big Pharma says It Must Collaborate with Juniors to Revive Real Innovation

Innovation in the pharmaceutical industry has come a long way in the last few decades, but with the saturation of medical technology, a slowdown as is being witnessed now was definitely inevitable. Big pharmaceutical companies are suddenly looking to collaborate at all levels to spark innovation.

A solid example of collaboration with a smaller company is Aequus Pharmaceuticals (OTC: AQSZF) (TSX.V: AQS), a pharmaceutical developr advancing novel delivery and a product pipeline with two significant partnerships; Supernus Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: SUPN), for the in-license Canadian rights to Supernus’s two epilepsy medicines, Topiramate XR, and Oxcarbazepine, and a separate deal with Corium International (NASDAQ: CORI).
Japanese pharma giant Takeda Pharmaceutical is one of the big companies that have led this push, signing more than 65 such collaborations in the last year and a half.

LOOKING FOR INSPIRATION

In recent years, there has been an observable trend where breakthroughs are happening outside big pharma environments, with small companies and academia taking the lead.

In order to reinvigorate their innovation portfolio, big pharma companies have been looking to partnerships with smaller companies with breakthroughs in new areas that have high innovative leeway such as drug delivery systems and treatments for neurodegenerative diseases.

Japanese pharma giant Takeda Pharmaceutical is one of the big companies that have led this push. Their partnerships take many different forms and are cut with players of all sizes, from one-person start-ups to universities and biotech companies. The company takes up ideas in all stages of research development, from earliest stages to market stage logistics.

Takeda usually takes the initiative to reach out to promising institutions, but cases where the other party contacts them first are becoming more common.

Takeda’s main areas of interest are oncology, CNS conditions and gastroenterology.

In one of the deals, Takeda is partnering with BioSurfaces to develop various drug-delivery systems for people with gastrointestinal illnesses.

Another deal, signed with AstraZeneca to help develop an antibody treatment for Parkinson’s disease represents another approach that Takeda is using to keep it at the forefront of biotech innovation.

Daniel Curran, senior vice president and head of Takeda’s Centre for External Innovation points to a prevailing trend where the majority of drugs approved in the last decade have been developed by small companies and academia.

Curran attributes this to high overhead and infrastructure costs associated with the structure big pharma, which diverts resources from innovation.

COLLABORATION CASE-IN-POINT: AEQUUS

Aequus Pharmaceuticals is a junior pharmaceutical company that has leveraged its collaboration to advance transdermal delivery systems.

By utilizing a patch, patients can have higher confidence in their dosages, especially with drugs that require multiple dose times during the day. A patient tied to the clock, over and over during the day, is much more susceptible to missing a dosage, and likely reducing the effectiveness of their medicine.

In the case of AQS1303, the transdermal form aims to replace a medication that is normally taken orally—up to four times a day.

Both AQS1301 and AQS1302 could be very important to their patients, as they both deal with neurological disorders that depend heavily on dosage consistency (schizophrenia, bipolar, depression, and epilepsy).

The company’s early collaboration with such large partners adds fuel to the investor interest as well.

HITTING THE MARK

This model of big to small collaboration is beneficial for all parties. It’s just a question of guiding the right growth.

Smaller companies often lack the resources to push their innovations through the full process of research and development, hence collaboration with moneyed companies helps to accelerate their development to market.

Big pharma on the other hand get in on the ground floor of promising innovations that help to keep their R&D costs down and open up new revenue streams. The entire healthcare industry is set to benefit from these partnerships, with novel biotech breakthroughs coming out to help deal with hard-to-treat conditions better.

Such partnerships will be increasingly important for critical breakthroughs in the healthcare industry.

The next push for global health improvement will be dependent on innovations in previously overlooked or already saturated areas of medical technology. Refining already existing technologies such as drug delivery systems like the innovations by Aequus Pharmaceuticals promises to yield the next wave of mass healthcare improvements akin to what was witnessed after the discovery of antibiotics.

With companies like Takeda directing requisite capital towards promising innovations in these areas, such a breakthrough does not to be far off.

Zynerba focuses on developing and commercializing proprietary synthetic cannabinoid therapeutics formulated for transdermal delivery. Its product candidates include ZYN002, which is in Phase II clinical trial for adult patients with refractory epileptic focal seizures and osteoarthritis, as well as pediatric patients with fragile X syndrome; and ZYN001 that is in preclinical stage for the treatment of fibromyalgia and peripheral neuropathic pain.

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